It's funny that polpolik and only a few others understood the framework of the original poster's question, which was asking which degree would offer the best salary and/or overall job opportunities in the market. The OP doesn't even seem to care about which route will make him the best trader. He's obviously more concerned about landing a high paying job and getting fat bonuses than trading his own money. And then it's so amusing to observe FXScalper come in expressing so much insecure frustration and crying in here that there's A TON of hope for high school drop-outs without GEDs. In fact, he's even making absurd suggestions that there's more hope for drop-outs without GEDs than people with higher education while also regarding PhDs as foolish chumps. Well, that's a common self-comforting role in ET, and FXScalper, the high school drop-out, quintessentially embodies that element to the full degree. Look. Acquiring a PhD or MBA won't necessarily make you a top trader. That's a given. However, it will offer the candidate supreme opportunities in the working world and more financial security in life. But if you don't even have a simple GED, you don't really have too many roads to take and trading a small account for retail Oanda is really the only rope you can grab since you're not even qualified to be in a low paying back-office role. I'm not even sure if Best Buy hires people without high school diplomas.
Fxscalper is like a redneck from Alabama who hit the lottery big time. "Well, son, all's you gotta do is spend yo day huntin them deer, come home to your wife with purdy lips, watch Tv, drink some bud, and play the luttery. Look at mee, I gots no educasyon but I'm sure richer than them Ha Skool Graduets"
the most important degrees for making money are: - a decent degree of intellectual talent - a good degree of creativity and salesmanship (marketing savvy) - a very high degree of drive and passion the alphabet degrees (PHD, MBA) are usually a manifestation of some, if not all of the above, but never a necessity to make it to the very top of any business-focused profession. strangely, the alphabet degrees are typically a requirement for admission into the middle ranks of any decent-paying business-focused profession.
Because only if you want to be a professor you will be at a disadvantage if you don't have a PhD. Lack of a PhD is not a serious disadvantage for the finance job market. As I said. If you need to know anything taught at a PhD program, you can either audit, read something or just hire a PhD. There is no need to waste 4-6 years of your life getting a PhD if you don't want to teach. Plus MBAs make more money than PhDs. If you need to feed your ego, need to have a piece of paper saying you're smarter than the rest of the world, go for the PhD, but that will cost you money and time.
wow.... thanks for all the clarifications... my take is that those suited for the suit jobs are good at looking that way... those taking these jobs (read opportunities) as traders that participate on these threads are not suit types.... just a thought....
absolutely great point. Both have great qualities as mentioned by a few posters. Unfortunately, I have neither. However, I am pursuing a masters for the sake of having one. As you see in this thread, several are looking backwards instead of looking forward. Then there are have nots speaking about something they themselves have not acquired (ie MBA/PhD). I will provide some incentive on what is what and some background of the arena I currently operate in. None of this will mention trading. So the looking forward part is a simple Q... What would an advance degree provide? The answer is a matter of agreeing that for certain opportunities, either may be mandatory just to get the foot in the door. As a result, it is understood that without either, certain opportunities will not be available simply because one "cannot fake the funk". This is certainly true in my field, credit derivatives. Although I am only a pseudo-quant & programmer, my knowledge base stems largely from my EE background. This knowledge base is what allowed me to be able to analyze credit derivatives and to understand and know what is what from a risk and modelling perspective. Rather than put some more examples before you, I'll post some tangibles. So at my former employer, I was finally given the OK to bring in a Quant (PhD in physics from Carnegie Mellon). Although it was largely for my own desire to learn more from then, it was also to leverage their mathematical intuition. PhD in a way forces them to find out what is what in matters of their field or related field. It is a highly developed skill. At the same time, we brought in an MBA for marketing. The PhD signed on at a salary of 225k with a guaranteed minimum of 100% bonus. The MBA was signed on at 85K and minimum of 75% bonus. With my B.S., I was a more towards the PhD spectrum of the two. Did we have a common ingredient? Sure we had top tier schools etc... However, we all were aware of the same perception which was that what we had asked for was the market average. These are the rates today. I have since stepped into a different oppotunity same arena and as you may have guessed, things are even better. So you will likely see traders here talk about why work for someone why this or that etc... My outlook has always been opportunity. I am still a bit too young apparently and thus still need these vehicles to unlock and open doors. Today I both trade & work. My work allows for me to learn in trading at my own expense. When looking forward, I certainly regret not having an MBA or even a PhD. Reason being, whereas 30 or 40 years ago a BS was a great differentiator, nowadays MS, MBAs, and PhD are the differentiators (ie. most have at least a bachelors). In the future, I see the PhD will be the differentiator... The structured finance arena is ever expanding and many companies are willing to pay top dollar to someone and sometimes even anyone who can slice and dice up the quantitative aspect a few dozen ways... I hope this helps. Presumably, you are interested in what you can expect as compensation. These are the tangible figures in NYC and the mean. If you can trade also with what you know, as does a close friend of mine (MS in Financial Engineering), his comp is 7 figures. As I tell all of my friends don't short sell yourself and don't fake the funk neither. Regards, MAK
Having sat in a few MBA classes at the ivory tower, this material is not even on their radar yet. Who's radar would this be on? I only wish I had the time to think this way. Surely the math here will look unreal to most. It is a limitation of perception for sure. I crunched these numbers... The piece I have yet to get a grasp on is how incentive is delivered to those who are employed. In other words, is there any downside to those who are employed on the inside in figuring out exactly what you have laid out and then taking their new knowledge and building the same construct (ie. the introduction of competition)? But then again, you mention that they "volunteer" the time? What is the employees return as opposed to the employers?... Regards, MAK!
sitting in on a few MBA classes is not the same as being under obligation and holding your career breath that those classes and degree will hold promise of employment.... so perhaps there was a commitment missing there... I wish I could have understood what you were trying to say. sentence structure and grammer would really help here. I guess you were saying that the employee could take that inside "know how" and open a boutique and compete with previous employer... that has happened to the extreme with the explosion of all these upper crust (read: successful) hedge funds... they were the core departments that brought in so much capital profits to the big boys on Wall Street, and they simply bolted and reformed after getting capitalization.... wow, what a country.... PS. the degree improves the person in addition to making them much more better and attractive to corporate divisions and recruiters (humor intentional )